Billionaire Makes Strong Bid to Buy Angels, Ducks : Commerce: Analysts say above-market, $400-million-plus offer can be justified by valuing franchises as real estate assets.

Technology billionaire Henry Nicholas III has offered to pay the Walt Disney Co. more than $400 million for the Angels and Mighty Ducks, a knowledgeable Orange County business source said Wednesday, in excess of what most sports business experts have estimated the teams are worth.

To help justify the high price, Nicholas and any partners would receive ownership of all the assets associated with the two teams, the source said. That would mean, for example, that Disney would have to license the rights to use the Mighty Ducks name if it wished to make another sequel to its movies about a hockey team of that name.

Although experts surveyed last week by The Times suggested a maximum value of about $370 million for the money-losing Disney teams, analysts said Wednesday a $450-million figure could be justified in part because of the potential for developing an extreme-sports complex adjacent to Edison Field, home of the Angels.

Nicholas, whose Broadcom Corp. is based in Irvine and who lives in south Orange County, has raised his public profile sharply in recent months and might be willing to pay a premium for the chance to acquire the county’s two pro sports franchises in a single stroke, analysts said.

He also appears to see the sports franchises as part of an ambitious larger picture in Anaheim. With surf wear executive Marvin Winkler, he is among the partners in an as-yet-unfinanced plan to build Gotcha Glacier, an immense indoor arena with snowboarding on artificial snow, surfing and bodyboarding in wave pools, and other individual sports.

The Glacier, whose cost has escalated into the $100-million range, would have particular appeal for teenagers and young adults--the “Generation Y” that has become the darling of marketers. It is the anchor for Sportstown, a proposed shopping, hotel, office and entertainment development on a parking lot between Edison Field and the Arrowhead Pond, where the Ducks play.

The premium price for the sports teams could be justified by valuing them not simply as sports franchises but as assets in real estate development, said Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

Imagine a mall, Burton said, with Edison Field at one end, the Pond at the other, and the Glacier in between. Instead of department stores like Nordstrom or Neiman-Marcus, the anchor tenants of this imaginary sports mall would be the Angels and Ducks.

“[Nicholas and any partners] could use them as anchors in a new-age mall,” Burton said. “They can have baseball at one end of the mall and hockey at the other end of the mall, and that will bring the parents in. Then they could have the adventure court--like a food court--in the middle.

“A lot of times, the margins on the food court are better than the margins in the big stores. Hockey and baseball might be the anchor tenants to a much more exciting contemporary development staged in the middle.”

One could argue, Burton said, that Disney has essentially subsidized such a development with its $1.4-billion investment in Disney’s California Adventure, a second theme park adjacent to Disneyland, with a hotel and entertainment complex in between.

When the new park opens in 2001, millions of additional tourists are expected to visit Orange County each year, many of them families whose older children might find a day at the Glacier more fun than a second or third day at the Disney parks.